It was a right mess this afternoon, nary a flight departed on schedule.
The flight I was on boarded on time, despite a last minute aircraft change. The 73W originally scheduled had apparently gone tech. On the flight it had been due to operate this morning it had been replaced by an E190 ( 142 to 88 seats. Ouch!), now we got a 738 instead. That meant KL was now also out of spare aircraft.
Exactly at STD the captain appeared in the aisle and gave us all the good news: an ATC delay of 60 minute due to "low cloud"! They had knows this for some time, but instead of announcing the delay at the gate they had decided to board on schedule and close th doors, so we would be ready to push back immediately in case ATC had a sudden change of mind.
Now I'm willing to accept thunderstorms, heavy snowfall, freezing rain, pea soup fog and nuclear blasts as legit reasons for delays, at least up to a point. But low cloud???
I had a conversation with the captain about it, and he was as baffled as he was vexed. It was raining lightly, the cloudbase was low, but that was all there was to it. He said that as long as he could find the runway he could take off, but ATC called all the shots.
In the event we took off about 40 minutes late, which compared favorably to most other flights this afternoon.
If this is the new normal at AMS, winter is going to be a lot of fun!
Johan